StoryGnat #35: The other heroes of WW1
Phew, StoryGnatter – what a week.
I love a bit of sunshine, but when it’s over 30 degrees in my flat, I struggle. Or as a friend of mine put it, perhaps my brain behaved like a jar of coconut oil in the heat (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, buy a jar and watch it through the year).
Anyway, my brain has at least partially resolidified, so I’m not having to sound an emergency StoryGnat cancellation klaxon. I do wonder what sound that might make, though.
Last week, we talked about sphagnum moss – honestly something I find utterly fascinating. And I promised that it would link on to this week’s story.
Well, I first heard about that magical moss several years ago, when I was part of a modern-day team of volunteers for the British Red Cross who transcribed the paper records of World War One Voluntary Aid Detachments (VADs) so they could be digitised.
And those volunteers who collected moss by the bucketload? Yep, they were part of all this.
I honestly thought I was having trouble deciphering handwriting the first time I came across references to people collecting moss for the war effort. But no.
Today, I wanted to talk a bit more about those wonderful people who made up the Voluntary Aid Detachments. Slightly confusingly, those individual volunteers are often referred to VADs themselves. I know.
VADs
Had you heard of VADs before today? Before I started volunteering, I knew about the volunteers, but I wouldn’t have known the term VAD.
The Voluntary Aid Detachments were set up under the joint badge of the British Red Cross and the Order of St John (which we’d probably think of more colloquially today as St John’s Ambulance). They worked all over the UK – and in smaller numbers overseas - during World War One. And in many ways, they’re the ‘other’ heroes (alongside the soldiers themselves) of the war.
A huge number of VADS, and the best known, worked as nurses in the hospitals set up all over the country for recuperating soldiers who’d been shipped home to recover. A far smaller number worked in hospitals on the continent, supporting the work of military nurses. The nurses’ work was invaluable, as was the work of the rest of the hospital volunteers making up Voluntary Aid Detachments, from the porters to the cooks and cleaners.
But many of the volunteers worked in other, no less crucial, roles.
As we already known, they collected sphagnum moss, which was used to make dressings.
They sewed bandages, knitted socks and made hot water bottle covers for soldiers.
They sewed bags to hold washing materials like soap and handkerchiefs for refugees and prisoners of war.
They collected hundreds of thousands of eggs to feed patients in hospital.
They really did do all sorts of work.
You can find out all about them here and here.
I highly recommend exploring the records for yourself, for free, right here. Can you find anyone from your family, or from the town where you live?
I’ll leave you to disappear down that fascinating rabbithole, and I’ll be back next week with something new…
Meg
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